Musical-mystery Curtains to open in Houston

Kim Zimmer and Robert Newman rehearse their roles for TUTS' Houston premiere of Curtains: she as hard-bitten producer Carmen Bernstein, he as stage-struck sleuth Lt. Frank Cioffi.

Kim Zimmer and Robert Newman rehearse their roles for TUTS' Houston premiere of Curtains: she as hard-bitten producer Carmen Bernstein, he as stage-struck sleuth Lt. Frank Cioffi.

Photo: CAROL ROSEGG

Photo: CAROL ROSEGG

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Kim Zimmer and Robert Newman rehearse their roles for TUTS' Houston premiere of Curtains: she as hard-bitten producer Carmen Bernstein, he as stage-struck sleuth Lt. Frank Cioffi.

Kim Zimmer and Robert Newman rehearse their roles for TUTS' Houston premiere of Curtains: she as hard-bitten producer Carmen Bernstein, he as stage-struck sleuth Lt. Frank Cioffi.

Photo: CAROL ROSEGG

Musical-mystery Curtains to open in Houston

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Some musicals have just one thing that makes them special. Others don't even have that one. Then there's Curtains, with so many reasons it's special you can scarcely list them all.

After its 511-performance Broadway run in 2007-08, when it was nominated for eight Tonys, this wryly funny musical mystery makes its Houston premiere in Theatre Under The Stars' production, opening Thursday at Hobby Center.

Curtains is that rarity, a completely original musical, not based on any existing source, nor using any recycled music. More endearing still, it's one of the few recent shows celebrating the sound and style of classic Broadway.

Unusual, too, is its blend of mystery and musical, anchored by a neat premise. When a new show's untalented leading lady is murdered on opening night of a Boston tryout, stage-struck Lt. Frank Cioffi sets out to solve the crime and fix the show for Broadway. In this putting-on-a-show show, everyone's both a suspect and a potential victim.

Most important, Curtains boasts a nifty new score by composer John Kander and lyricist Fred Ebb, one of musical theater's greatest writing teams, creators of such classics as Cabaret, ChicagoandKiss of the Spider Woman. Unfinished when Ebb died in 2004, it's one of the team's final gifts to audiences — and given the threat that it might never have found its way to fruition, particular reason for gratitude.

"It's a love letter to musical theater all the way through," says Mark S. Hoebee, who is directing TUTS' co-production with New Jersey's Paper Mill Playhouse, where Hoebee is artistic director. "You get John and Fred's incredible craftsmanship and their love of musical theater. It intentionally feels familiar because it's celebrating a certain type of show, and they've written some of the great shows of our lifetime. The spirit of it invites the audience to fall in love with the show's theatrical world and go on this crazy journey."

Curtainshad a long, strange trip of its own. With original librettist Peter Stone (1776, Titanic), Kander and Ebb had tinkered with their mystery show on and off since the early 1980s. After Stone died in 2003, Rupert Holmes, Tony-winning composer, lyricist and librettist ofThe Mystery of Edwin Drood,signed on as new book writer. Holmes had the crucial inspiration that the show would work better set in Broadway's golden age (circa 1959) than as a contemporary piece. Rewriting the book from start to finish, he changed the show-within-the-show to a "sweetly ridiculous" (his words) westernizedRobbin' Hood.Curtains finally was heading into the home stretch - when Ebb died.

Holmes and Scott Ellis, the original director who shepherded Curtains to Broadway, left it to Kander whether they should continue after Ebb died. Kander decided, after all the work they'd put into the show, his partner would have wanted them to complete it. So they did. Where new lyrics were needed, Kander or Holmes wrote them. After its well-received Los Angeles tryout in 2006, Curtains opened on Broadway in March 2007, to largely favorable reviews. The New Yorker found the show "smart, fun and ingeniously put together," while the Associated Press deemed it "very funny and thoroughly entertaining... musical comedy heaven."

The genuine affection of Curtains' homage to traditional Broadway shines in such moments as the signature anthem Show People. Even the more romantic sentiments find expression in theatrical terms, as when Cioffi and ingenue love interest Nikki conjure up a Fred-and-Ginger fantasy in A Tough Act to Follow.

Curtains' behind-the-scenes saga adds resonance, even another layer of meaning. Two key ballads,Thinking of HimandI Miss the Music, arise in the subplot about Georgia and Aaron, the estranged husband-and-wife song-writing team. The knowledge that Kander wrote those songs after Ebb's death adds poignancy, for instance, when Aaron sings of struggling to write a song alone after years of working with a partner.

One has to appreciate the impudence of a show determined to "make merry with murder" (in effect, laugh at death) when two of its creators didn't survive to opening night. Yet as the song insists, "the show must go on," and that "special kind of people known as show people" do, too. Which is exactly what Curtains so gallantly proves.

Maybe that's why the show seems such a labor of love for those involved, whether the Broadway original or this new production.

Hoebee recognizes the challenge of a new production, as the original was the apotheosis of classic Broadway style in all departments. He says Curtains will prove as delightful with a new cast, designers, direction and choreography.

"That's the thrill of working on this show," he says. "We've assembled a dynamite cast, and everyone brings their own unique perspective. What we're doing is taking all that they wrote into it, all those tips of the hat to classic shows and this wonderful collection of iconic theater types, and finding our own ways to make them unique and funny and lovable."

Top billed are Robert Newman as intrepid sleuth Frank Cioffi and Kim Zimmer as brassy producer Carmen Bernstein; both have ample theater creds yet are most widely known for their years of teamwork on TV's The Guiding Light.

Joann M. Hunter, who was associate choreographer to Rob Ashford for the Broadway production, is creating new choreography.

"I know the show very well," Hunter says. "And much as I loved Rob's dances, the idea here is to come up with an entirely new choreographic event that suits our company and our production, how I want the dancers to tell the story."

David Elder, the Houston native who's been featured in such hits as Titanicand42nd Street, returns to the role of Bobby, which he assumed during the Broadway run, and has played in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia productions.

"I'm very excited to do the show again, especially with Joann choreographing, since it was she who taught me the dances when I went into the Broadway production." Hunter and Elder have been friends since dancing in the chorus of Guys and Dolls in the early '90s.

"Those who saw it on Broadway will find similarities as well as differences in our production," Elder says. "If anything, I'd say Joann's dances are going to be even more athletic than those in the Broadway production."

"This is the type of musical that I first fell in love with," Hunter says, "the reason I got into this business. The kind that entertains with catchy songs, rousing dances, funny dialogue - but which can be poignant as well as silly. Because of all that went into the show, because it's such an homage to classic Broadway, you want your work to be the best it can possibly be."